"Not a Deal"

"Not a Deal" 

That's what the Lubavitch kid who comes to my office every Friday to try to convince me to put on tefillin said. 

He's been trying to get me to put on tefillin for weeks. His original pitch was that I should do a mitzvah to help the soldiers win the war in Israel. I said, really? How is my putting on tefillin gonna help win the war in Israel. He said, every mitzvah helps. I said, if you believe that, then you must believe that God cares about me doing a mitzvah and that He can intervene in what's going on. Then you must also believe that on some level God allowed October 7th to happen in the first place. And somehow there's a connection for God between doing mitvahs or not doing mitzvahs and allowing terrible things to happen. The kid agreed. I said, well I don't believe that me putting on tefillin is going to help win the war. Because if I believed that, I'd have to also believe that God is cruel enough to let young, innocent people die and be taken hostage, because we didn't do enough mitzvahs. If there's a God, I can't believe He'd be that petty. So I don't want to insult His intelligence by putting on tefillin and thinking he'd respond by making Israel win the war.

But that was a few weeks ago. This is a new week.           

"Not a deal." 

"What's not a deal," I asked.

"100 criminals and murderers released for one Israeli hostage, that's not a deal."

"Really," I said. "What's a better deal."

"One for one."

"So you think that one murderer has the same value as one innocent victim?" I asked. "I don't. I would trade 1000 criminals for 1 hostage. Because to me that's the value. 1000 to 1. Do you know what gives life value?"

He waited for my answer.

"Can't be faith in God. I mean, the terrorists have plenty of that, or so they claim. It's the law that gives life value. When a person follows the law, it means they are taking responsibility for others. The terrorists are lawless. That's why they will even kill their own women and children. To them, there are no laws, or rather they are the law, and so human life has no value. But surely you understand this. It's what Judaism is all about. Learning and following the laws of Torah. But it also applies to citizens following the laws of a country. The laws make us responsible for one another. Gaza is lawless, so human life has zero value. The hostages are citizens of Israel. They have so much value that the government and all the citizens of Israel are willing to do anything to get them back, even if it means sacrificing their own sons and daughters in battle. With responsibility comes value." 

"But what if the terrorists being released kill more people. It happened before."

"Yes, it's possible." I said. "But it's not inevitable. We let our guard down before. Our leaders failed. If we don't hold the leaders we chose accountable for the mistakes they made, then we are more responsible for letting it happen again."

"Making a deal, shows what you value," I told the kid. "They value their murderers and criminals. We value our fathers, mothers, daughters and sons."  

"Kol Yisrael arevim zeh la-zeh," he said.

Lesson learned.